Over the years I gained a lot of experience with film, what it would do and would not do. Fast-forward a couple decades from that first camera, and I managed to afford a Minolta 7000i with a couple of Sigma zooms (28-70 and 70-300) and a 3200i flash. That camera, a 5200i flash and a later 8000i (in white with a white 5200i flash and a short zoom, bought partly because it was a sscreamin' deal and I wanted to play with studio flash and eeded the 8000i PC sync) served me very well over the intervening 20+ years, and they are both still pristine and in perfect working order. I took the better part of a NYI photo course and many community college photography courses shortly after I bought the 7000i, but have otherwise mostly gone my own way.
Over the years I expanded my lens assortment, eventually relegating the Sigma lenses to some forgotten corner of the closet as I obtained better glass. The following are the lenses that I keep handy, in no particular order(all Minolta):
28-135 F4-4.5
20 2.8
28 2.8
50 2.8
85 1.4
80-200 2.8 APO
500 f8 Cat
100mm Macro(with ring flash)
I have a number of adapters and fittings to use my four flashes off-camera either singly or in combination, with an umbrella or lightbox as needed. I had a custom plate made up that mounts the 3200i flash low enough on a handle that I can aim the 5200i past it for ceiling bounce in portrait orientation, setting the 3200i for light direct fill. I will be looking to duplicate that setup with the a900, but will save details for another thread(I am poring over RRS and Wimberly stuff). I also have a selection of filters, though by far the most-used are the graduated ND filters.
Here are some pics from back in the day when Kodak Photo CD was about the best way to digitize your photos. They have not been manipulated in any way other than conversion to jpeg(though they could surely benefit).
Since about 2003 I have been doing most of my picture-taking with a Sony MVC-CD400, a 5mp camera that writes to mini-CD. The rationale at the time was, memory sticks were very expensive and I wanted a digicam that we could use to take virtually unlimited pics while on a long vacation without needing to have a laptop along to unload them. I have taken nearly 8,000 pics with it, mostly snapshots and technical photos to illustrate steps in automobile restoration -- though a few turned out really nice:
The problem with this camera is, while it does have a relatively full set of manual controls, it just doesn't excite for creative photography. For example, there is no way to set the hyperfocal distance, it is not conducive to use of filters, it can be veeeerrry slooow to power up, take pics, and write them out to disk, the resolution is relatively low, sensor response bears little resemblance to film, etc.
So, on to the Alpha 900 part of the story. My wife has noticed how much fun I have been having with my mini HD video camera(Aiptek GVS), shooting and editing video. We were sitting over the dinner table and she announced that she wanted to get me a special birthday gift as a thank you for putting up with her all these years.
Noticing my enthusiasm for video, she then told me she was thinking about getting me a prosumer video camera. I asked her how much she thought that might cost, and she said she was thinking in the low $2,000's. I had seen a short article about the a900 on Wired.com a couple of weeks previously, and I immediately told her that I would rather have a DSLR if I could find one that would use my existing gear; the GVS is about as deep as I ever want to go into video, though if a video camera comes along that uses my A-mount lenses I may change my mind.
Reading up a bit on the KM takeover by Sony, the broad compatibility with Minolta lenses and flashes, and the point about the a900 that it has a full-frame sensor, I decided that the a900 was the way to go. Some of the features that I sorely missed on the 7-8000i were MLU and DOF preview and I had resolved to never buy another SLR that didn't have those features. It is my opinion that whatever compatibility issues I may encounter, it's very likely that backward compatibility will never get any better than what is offered in the a900.
So,we pulled the trigger. I found one new with a US warranty, shipped for a tad more than $2,550. I also ordered(separately) an LCD protector from SonyStyle. Since then I have played a bit with CF cards and for now I hav settled on a Lexar 300x and a SanDisk Extreme IV, both 16GB.
Computer-wise I am prepared, I have a Quad-Core 3GHz/4GB with a 2TB RAID and a 24" 1080p screen that I put together with video editing in mind. I have Photoshop 7, and from what I've been reading I am leaning toward DxO for RAW conversion, even though they don't yet have any correction profiles for any of my lenses(yes, I put in a request). BTW have they worked out their stability issues? While I can run Linux on this system(Knoppix) It's inconvenient since I need Windows for working remotely on occasion(my day job). So any converters I would consider would have to run on a PC, though in a pinch I have a couple of Sun machines, an Ultra 2 and an ultra 5. Any tools that would run on a flavor of Linux that can be loaded on the Ultra 2 might be worth considering -- We have a wide variety of Linux machines at work I could use for initial evaluations, or better yet I may post some RAWs so people can show me what's possible with the different offerings.
Since I originally wrote the above paragraph I hav started playing with Raw Therapee -- more below.
As Walt Knapp pointed out in my first such thread elsewhere, it's a big adjustment moving into a DSLR of this caliber. I had become lazy with my P&S: no matter what I did I ran into a wall with IQ so I tended to just leave it on automatic most of the time. I've had many small wake-up calls already, for example going from available-light indoor shooting with tungsten WB then slapping a flash on the camera without resetting WB gave me a case of the blues.
I quickly experienced disappointment with IDC, and have been playing with Raw Therapee for now. I have a long-unanswered email in to DXO asking about the "green shadows" issue. I think I can live with RT for now, I intend to wait for DXO to fix the green issue then I will put that software head-to-head against C1 & LR(Not expecting a lot from LR, but want to investigate mixing & matching workflow options). I want all of my trial versions to be active at the same time and can afford to be patient. After I've had a bit more time to play with RT I will post a thread looking for input on workflows.
The vast majority of my a900 pics so far are pretty worthless from an artistic viewpoint, mostly because I have been experimenting to familiarize myself with the camera. IMHO I still have a lot more work to do before I can focus(heh) on being creative with it. For example I have a rented LensAlign that I will play with this weekend to correct any FF/BF issues. I'm also planning to spend some time capturing some calibration images to send to the author of PTLens; he currently does not have profiles for any of these lenses on an a900.
Also, I have found that quite a bit of the rubber, both on the older camera grips and on some of the lenses has dried out somewhat, creating a white patina that goes away with light rubbing due to the oil on my skin. I was considering spraying a fine mist of WD-40 on a rag and using it to refresh these rubber pieces -- this works very well on classic car parts but I thought I would see what people here think of the idea of using this approach on camera gear before attempting it. Obviously I am not planning to spray any WD directly on the lenses, rather rubbing in the minimum amount necessary to condition the rubber then leaving the lenses standing in a warm place overnight to let the solvents evaporate off. If there is a better solution for conditioning the rubber I'm all ears.
Anyway, I thought I would share the following a900 shot. I have these images in a special gallery that is not automatically watermarked. I'm still grappling with exactly how to watermark my other images -- I think I've overdone it a bit for now but will eventually find a balance. Comments on this issue are welcome -- I have a couple of different approaches represented in my other galleries -- you are welcome to link any of those here for general C&C.
this image was taken near sunset, ISO 200, 500 f8 @
1/80 handheld. Image converted from RAW using RT defaults. I'm sure I could do better with a tripod; these guys are probably hard to catch with MLU but I may give it a whirl with the tripod. I've played with RT vignetting adjustments a bit and I'm sure that once I get going in earnest I'll be able to produce some very nice images with this lens/body combo and with other lenses.
Full size image here
Here is a 100% crop:
These images are not posted with the intent of looking for C&C since I was only playing, but C&C is welcome so long as you keep that in mind.
I'll start new threads for some of the questions above if I don't get answers here; for now I just wanted to say Hi and introduce myself.